Who will take the money and run?

Television spectrum auction. Big money?

Article credit: fybush.com


http://www.fybush.com/nerw-20151019/

If you've been following the trades of late, you know that the noncoms, especially school-owned noncoms, want out. There are a few duopolies that will channel share and sell a station. Sinclair has said they will do this as will Ellis Communications. They own KDOC and KSCI in Los Angeles. Bert Ellis has said that they will sell KSCI at auction and possibly channel share with their sister station. CBS has said it will sell a few O&Os (undoubtedly low performing ones) and enter into affiliation agreements.

I know several Class A owners who desperately want out at any cost. They don't care how low the bidding goes. In fact, next to noncoms, we'll probably see a lot of Class As go on the block. How many will enter into CSAs is anyone's guess.

LPTV stations and translators are not auction eligible. So, in the end, we'll probably see a lot of commercial full power and quite a few low power stations remain.

Looks like the FCC will be lopping off the UHF band at Channel 29, recovering 126 MHz of spectrum. I can't see too many LPTVs remaining, at least in major markets, once full-power and Class A stations relocate to Channels 2-29.

http://www.broadcastlawblog.com/201...r-spectrum-to-wireless-users-to-begin-may-31/

The irony here is that the broadcast spectrum is being sold to cell companies, and the use of cell phones is what is destroying broadcasting. Not that there's any way to combat that shift. But it's ironic to me that the FCC is aiding the destruction of the broadcasting business that it also regulates. Meanwhile, broadcast companies are not allowed to buy spectrum. It's not unlike the government destroying the railroad business while it was building the federal highway system.

landtuna said:

The federal highway system (the Interstate Highway System) was created first and foremost as a national defense capability on which to move military assets from place to place in an expedited manner.

Click to expand...

And broadcasting provides the government access to the public in the event of a national emergency through EAS. There is no similar system for cell phone other than Amber Alert texts, which are voluntary. So the government is killing its own emergency alert system by allowing the unchecked growth of cell phones.

landtuna said:

I don't understand why the broadcast industry is being negatively impacted to provide more spectrum for the mobile industry. Doesn't everyone over the age of 6 already have a mobile phone in this country?

Click to expand...

The point is there are two different sets of rules. Broadcast companies can't buy the frequencies they use, while telecom companies can. Telecom is being allowed to grow at the expense of broadcast frequencies.

TheBigA said:

The point is there are two different sets of rules. Broadcast companies can't buy the frequencies they use, while telecom companies can. Telecom is being allowed to grow at the expense of broadcast frequencies.

Click to expand...

Over the past two decades the Commission has been evolving from a regulator of all things airwaves, to just another government revenue collector. Gradually withing the past twenty years, engineers, spectrum managers, and policy makers have been replaced by lawyers and bureaucrats. In my view, if the new FCC is only tasked by Congress with bringing in money via auctions, then broadcasters also should be allowed to purchase their spectrum, just like the Cell/PCS guys, and then do what they want with it.

Kelly A said:

Over the past two decades the Commission has been evolving from a regulator of all things airwaves, to just another government revenue collector.

Click to expand...

Actually I believe the date of the conversion goes back to 1982. So it's more than 20 years. However, it's only recently that the Congress has actually made their agency appropriation contingent on revenue.

But yes, I agree that broadcasters should be able to buy their frequencies. However that would require another rewrite of the TCA, and we all know how likely that would be given the current state of Congress.

landtuna said:

But if any railroad assets were destroyed by building the highway system it was passenger traffic. Except for the heavily traveled Northeast corridor (BosWash) passenger traffic has dwindled to a minimum and operates at the mercy of freight traffic. It was the development of cheap airline flights that mostly killed off long haul passenger rail traffic and cars killed off the short hauls.

Click to expand...

Beg to differ on this point. During the past 50 years, the number of freight spurs and freight track mileage has dwindled, and even entire mainline railroads (like the Milwaukee Road and the SP&S in my own state) have completely disappeared. Tracks that were used for local industrial and commercial freight were torn up -- hundreds of miles of track that were there in the 1960's and 1970's, now completely gone.

The Interstate highway system and the speed with which trucking was able to supplant railroad delivery of goods eliminated a lot of mileage of freight track, as well as freight tonnage.

How this relates to broadcasting is where you and I agree... The cell phone has replaced the radio in many respects. It's ultimately the future of information delivery, whether we like it or not.

Whether it can truly replace radio remains to be seen, when you consider the cost of digital royalties. I suppose if those are ever reduced, the cell system will definitely compete as a medium with over the air broadcasting.

I also share Big A's emergency and national disaster information concerns. Online radio is great when you can get it, but geo-fencing is an issue if there were a true regional or national disaster. And if the grid somehow were to go down, cell phones only last so long without re-charging, whereas car radios and home radios last a lot longer. There is a national safety interest in radio and TV broadcasting that is just as important as the cell system.

My local city has an emergency information plan: notices placed on bulletin boards located in certain neighborhoods. They're not counting on the cell system working in case of a major earthquake. They probably figure that local broadcasters will be on the air in some form.

boombox4 said:

I also share Big A's emergency and national disaster information concerns.

Click to expand...

Which is why it makes no sense for the government to promote the use of cell phones at the expense of broadcast. Especially since they really have no plan for using cell phones to provide emergency and national disaster information. So the internet remains unregulated without responsibility, and broadcast is overwhelmed with regulation and responsibility, and a diminishing budget to pay for it. Exactly the situation the railroads found themselves in 100 years ago.

Don't mean to propagate the off-topic; but many States and Counties around the U.S. have implemented and are encouraging the use of local public safety apps for smartphones. Clearly nobody has bothered to tell them that cell and data services are one of the first things to go off line during natural or man made disasters.

God forbid they promote broadcasting (AM-FM or TV) for distribution of public safety information. That just wouldn't be sexy!

Kelly A said:

Don't mean to propagate the off-topic; but many States and Counties around the U.S. have implemented and are encouraging the use of local public safety apps for smartphones.

Click to expand...

They may be encouraging the use, but the only thing they provide is amber alerts. Personally that's not enough to get me to subscribe.